Now that was surely discreditable conduct, for here was a statesman who, while ostensibly appealing to the voice of the people was doing his level best behind the scenes to deny to it a full and a free opportunity of expression. Yet the whole political world was in so discreditable a condition that there were actually people who thought then--and perhaps still think to-day--that that budding politician was unfairly and hardly treated when he was thereafter pursued from constituency to constituency by his cheated opponent, and successfully prevented from re-entering Parliament even to this day. Probably in other branches of life he was an upright and honourable man, but politics had affected him, as religion or social ambition has affected others, and made him a discreditable witness to the faith which he professed. Now when you have great organisations and great institutions thus discrediting themselves by conniving at the double-dealings of those whom they would place or keep in authority--you cannot expect the honestly critical observer to continue to place their judgment above his own, or to believe (when some difficult moral problem presents itself) that there is safety for his own soul in relying upon their solution of it. The sanction of the popular verdict in a community which is true to its professions is very great and should not lightly be set aside. But the sanction of a community or of an organisation which is false to its professions is nil. And it is in the face of such conditions (to which Society and religion always tend to revert so long as their claim is to hold power on any basis of inequality or privilege) that the individual conscience is bound to assert itself and become a resistant irrespective of the weight of numbers against it. And so, in any State where it can be said with truth that the average ethical standard for individual conduct is better than the legal standard, the duty of individual resistance to evil law begins to arise. “Bad laws,” said a wise magistrate, “have to be broken before they can be mended.” And to be broken with good effect they must be broken not by the criminal classes but by the martyrs and the reformers. It is not without significance that every great moral change in history has been brought about by lawbreakers and by resistance to authority.